Marxism in Latin America - Antecedents And Origins, 1929–1959: International Crises And The Search For Common Ground, Foquismo, The 1970s And After: New Heterodoxies
social political marxist parties
Throughout the twentieth century, Latin Americans wrestled with the enduring problems of foreign domination, social inequality, and poverty. Marxist popular movements, political parties, and intellectuals were often key players in these struggles, forming an important basis for trenchant social critique, mass social movement, and revolutionary organization. Even in countries where Marxist ideas, parties, and organizations never developed a mass following or consistent electoral presence, they exercised a broad influence on social movements, politics, and culture. Latin American Marxism cannot be abstracted from this broader social, political, and intellectual ferment. Despite the insistence of many Marxist political parties and regimes on ideological unity, the history of Latin American Marxism has been characterized by creative engagement, partisan debate, and heterodoxy.
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This ferment is reflected in how Latin American Marxists tell their own history. Although Marxist parties and popular organizations, strictu sensu, did not exist until the 1920s, many of the popular icons of latter-day Marxist movements have been drawn from earlier generations and other traditions of social struggle. Heterodox Marxist intellectuals have tended to echo radical currents in nineteent…
Despite the independence of many Latin American Marxist thinkers, international developments also continued to shape Marxist ideas in Latin America. The global economic crash of 1929 reinforced the Comintern's turn toward ultraleftism, and in many countries communist parties broke with allies in reformist unions and organizations, established rival organizations, and vigorously contested th…
Latin American communist parties tended to remain chary of insurrectionary strategies and labor radicalism in the postwar years. Indeed, the most militant opposition often came from other left dissidents. In Cuba, where the Communist Party had initially collaborated with the U.S.-backed military regime of Fulgencio Batista, the leadership of a nascent revolutionary movement emerged from the populi…
Where possible, mainline communist parties tended to support a moderate strategy of trade unionism and broad electoral alliances. In 1970 the Chilean Marxist Salvador Allende was elected president at the head of a shaky coalition of radical, socialist, and communist parties. The Chilean Unidad Popular (UP) embarked on a modest program of social reforms within a constitutional framework. Strategic …
Allende Gossens, Salvador. Chile's Road to Socialism. Edited by Joan E. Garces, translated by J. Darling, introduction by Richard Gott. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin, 1973. Angell, Alan. "The Left in Latin America since c. 1920." In Latin America since 1930: Economy, Society, and Politics. Vol. 6 of Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell. New York: Cambridge Un…
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